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A Colony With a Conscience

A Colony With a Conscience
By KENNETH T. JACKSON

THREE hundred and fifty years ago today, religious freedom was born on this continent. Yes, 350 years. Religious tolerance did not begin with the Bill of Rights or with Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1786. With due respect to Roger Williams and his early experiment with “liberty of conscience” in Rhode Island, this republic really owes its enduring strength to a fragile, scorched and little-known document that was signed by some 30 ordinary citizens on Dec. 27, 1657.

It is fitting that the Flushing Remonstrance should be associated with Dutch settlements, because they were the most tolerant in the New World. The Netherlands had enshrined freedom of conscience in 1579, when it clearly established that “no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of his religion.” And when the Dutch West India Company set up a trading post at the southern tip of Manhattan in 1625, the purpose was to make money, not to save souls. Because the founding idea was trade, the directors of the firm took pains to ensure that all were welcome.More

D'oh

I ordered some maple wainscoating from Menards and went out last week to pick it up in my baby car. I found an eight foot box. I went home without the box. We went out with the adult car and picked it up, and I set it in the basement. Yesterday, I opened the box to find the 32" wood in the eight foot box.

hmm

I may hafta stop knocking Apple laptops. They just replaced the DVD drive and put the third motherboard in mine (my Sony laptop). The power connector went wonky and the first replaced motherboard network connection never worked. Last time I tried using the DVD burner, it kept not finding the disk, although it worked fine to boot from.